Adolfo, the first thing we are going to ask you to do is to introduce yourself, tell us when and where were you born? Well, I was born in the Republic of San Telmo, bordering the Republic of La Boca and Monserrat so in this beloved Buenos Aires, sometimes not so dear but well, this is where one belongs I was born in the year 31, I am 86 years old in a very poor home, in the famous abandoned after the yellow fever and were occupied by the immigrants and the dark ones we didn So in this neighborhood, as in La Boca and San Telmo, I met wonderful people: Quinquela Mart Juan de Dios Filiberto, from "caminito", masters of art like Cesar Sforza and Roberto Capurro, two great sculptors. But life there in La Boca and San Telmo was very particular, there were "tambos" where we went to drink milk with ladyfingers, that for us was like to touch the sky; I saw the dancing of the things like drums and dance, the when afternoon fell and they finished working, they took the table to the sidewalk, the beer, and we children were running around but we saw the dark ones dancing, and also the fishing boats. My father was a fisherman so I always had a very strong connection with the sea, with the rivers as a navigator. Adolfo how was the family completed? My mother who died when I was very young, an older sister who died this year in March, Zulema, at age of 94, she used to complained because she was walking slower than before, and she never wore glasses or a cane, anythying. I think she got tired of being on this planet and she went to another one. My father, who after the death of my mother put us in orphanages, divided us, so the three brothers ended up all in different places. I was admitted to the Spanish boarding school, there in Federico Lacroze and Olleros, I was there until I was 10, 11 years old, and then I went to live with my father for some time and then with my grandmother, a Guarani your maternal grandmother? Yes. A Guarani indian who taught me without speaking, was a contemplative, spoke very little. She used to speak a lot of Guarani, as a boy I understood Guaran when I get angry I end up cursing in Guaran But well, there I learned a lot of things and I thought I had a crazy grandmother because she talked to the plants, to the animals, she spoke with the wind... do you know what she told me when I was little? I was telling her, what are you going to do when you grow up grandmother? and my grandmother told me 'I'll tell you the story of my people', of the jungle, she was a savage, a woman of the jungle. That's why I get very angry when they tell me that capitalism is savage, I do not know any savage capitalist; my grandmother was a savage but she was not a capitalist, on the contrary she was a woman who would now be called an ecologist, who talked with plants and animals. Of course, I began to understand the wisdom of my grandmother when I was older and she was gone How old were you when she died? I was a teenager when my uncle took her to the Iguazu Falls. She died there; she was reborn in the jungle. But I remember from that time, it was the coup in Paraguay with Stroessner, a lot of people came to our house, many Paraguayans. First the men, many were soldiers who had fought against Stroessner, then came women, children and grandmothers, my aunts, tried to settle them in different places. I remember at night they would lock themselves in their rooms, we had no access there because we were children, we could not get in, plus they all spoke Guarani. But at night, the guitar would come out, the harps, the accordions, the bandoneons, polkas, chamam guara I remember that there was a woman who danced the dance of the bottle with a bottle on her head, it was wonderful, I was always waiting for the bottle to fall, which never happened. And even with the bottle on her head she raised a handkerchief from the floor with her mouth, I would say she had it glued... no. When the dance finished the bottle was removed and placed on the table... I checked to see if there was something in the bottle, that struck me very much. There I began to understand what was the situation of the people, the persecutions, and the pain of separated families What years are we talking about? from '45 - 46 those times. There I worked during the day and studied at night at the Fine Arts School in Buenos Aires, but we lived in Haedo and extraordinary things happened. There was a dog, my dog that would pick me up every night at the train station. I do not know how he knew what train I was on because it was amazing, and afterwards I went home with him, that was 12 blocks away. Without the dog I was afraid to go through those dark streets at night, but the dog was big - one of those German shepherd - sometimes he ran ahead but he always looked back to see where I was. Later when I grew up, I went to live alone. So if you had to rescue images from that time related to politics, to social life, what would those postcard be? What I have left is the struggle of the people, and poverty too, because we were poor. That is, nobody showed me poverty because we lived it. The famous at that time it was the poor man's food, the I always had a spiritual inclination; I grew up with the Franciscans So I was going to ask you, what place did religion occupy in your childhood, in your home and how did you live it? at home logically - linked to the Guaran And well, after primary school that I did with the Franciscans, I started to understand, although religious teaching was a little mechanistic, until after when I discovered what the strength of the bible was and to commit myself in the villas, when I was younger. And when did that start to happen? Since I was a child, when I was in the Spanish orphanage, they were Carmelitas, so that we already had religion as a base. Although I was very rebellious, I didn who was a woman who after cleaning, arranging, attending the door, she sat in a corner of the patio and began to carve wood and when I misbehaved, the nuns sent me to Josefa, who was the only one that could calm me down, she used to tell me 'come sit here' and she finally gave me a blade and a piece of wood to start carving. Josefa was amazing, it was one of those Galician with their famous hair bun... and she sang as she carved the wood, Then when I was bored, without being taken to Josefa I went alone, and I sat next to her and she was a little bit of a substitute for my mother, because she was very fond of me and always called me. Then when I did a mess, the nuns used to hit, you know? and I always ended up biting them, kicking them, poor nuns!... they won their place in heaven; they paid all their karmas with me. Whenever they beat me, I kicked them back, biting, and then I was sent to Josefa. And like that, little by little, you start to understand what happens in your life The other day I remembered that at the age of 6, 7 years old, they took us out to the street, we went out very little, and they put us next to some small trees, so that we could plant the small trees of the path and they were the jacaranda trees, then I saw them with those blue flowers. For me, when I see a Jacaranda tree, I always remember being 6 or 7 years old and planting that tree. And it is a tree that I love, that moves me, to see that beauty of nature, of mother earth, when I go to my house and I see them bloomed it is incredible, what Mother Earth gives us, the fruit of creation. For some it is the work of God, for others, natural events, for me it has a profound meaning all that. How did that teenager who studied and worked became interested in the topic of politics, of nonviolence? Well, you are very young. In the Plaza de Mayo there were little book kiosks around the square, painted green as those in Paris, at the Sienna bank. Later, when I went to Paris, I said 'these people copied from Plaza de Mayo'. And there was a man who, as a boy I sold newspapers, I hung from trams and invented news to sell newspapers, catastrophes, all lies but the point was to sell newspapers; and when they paid me, I bought used books; I was only able to buy a new book when I was older. But all the books I had were used and it was funny, he never knew my name and I never knew his name, he called me 'kid' and I called him 'sir', so it was a relationship between 'sir' and the 'kid'. So it was: 'How are you sir', 'how are you kid, what are you looking for', 'and I'm looking for some book, something interesting', 'look, I have two books, I'm going to give one to you' it was the autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi "My Experience with the Truth" a tiny little book, 'and the other one you pay it when you can' it was "The Mountain of the 7 Circles" Thomas Merton. A deeper book that I did not understand anything about. I read, I read and I tried... 'Sir, I don't understand anything, what do I do?' 'Look kid, I'll show you how you have to read, do not read more than one page a day, and think. If you didn't understand something, go back to reading the same page, not another page, because you want to read many pages and you don't understand anything, you will not understand anything at all, then start reading a page, and analyze that page. When you learned that, read another one' So those two books became my main books, and that's where I started... What struck you the most about Gandhi's work? Gandhi's thing that struck me very much was that he was a deeply spiritual man, and profoundly political, social, a man who apart from the struggle for the liberation of India did not stay in that, because being free is much more than taking out the British from India, it was... he became the untouchable, the last of all to be an equal and try to change through the Ashram (monastery), community life, social work and much of education, the spirituality and education. From there Gandhi had through nonviolence a path of integral liberation of the human being. It was not simply to throw out the British, but for the human being, men and women to learn to work and do things without falling into the consumer society That he used social resistance; it is not individual but collective, mobilizing millions of Indians and the Ghandi movement continues to this day, right? Although India now is institutionally different, they have the atomic bomb now right? but the experience of the communities in the Ashram... and afterwards, as an adult I met Lanza del Vasto a disciple of Mahatma Gandhi who creates the Ark community in Montpellier in the south of France. And there I also worked as a farmer, raising the crops at 4 in the morning, and picking things up in the garden for the day's meal. Now Gandhi what he gives is a change, a total turn of social, cultural and political action, this is why Gandhi is impressive. And this with the Franciscans, I saw him very close to San Francisco de As who had a total detachment from himself to find new paths of relationship with Mother Nature. How did you reconcile that if we think of Argentina in those years where politics went through other paths? How did that option for nonviolence place you in front of other movements, other currents including Christian? There were many different things, I can But I went a lot to La Boca, I went to and there I began working in parishes. At one time, as a teenager we went to Villa 31 with Carlos Mujica, when the mass ended, they took everything out and it was a cooperative. There were bags of sugar, noodles, rice, beans, and people went and bought this at less than half the price of what went to trade. And well, little by little we were learning from this and that was also nonviolence, it was social work. And we read a lot at that time, when I was a child there was no television, there were no cell phones, then in squares socialists, including personally I knew Alfredo Palacios, who was the great socialist, even as he grew old I used to drive him to his house with my 4L; Alfredo Palacios was a man with an extraordinary culture and had set up popular libraries in the parks. In the Lezama Park there was a popular library, they were very French kiosks, very nice, and the librarian would open there a little in the morning and in the afternoon and we would go and ask for a book. We had a small group; we called 'our band' right? And we would throw ourselves there under a tree and read. Each one would read a page, two pages, and there we read everything, adventure books of all kinds, and there you understand things. At that time, well, they were difficult times what year are we talking about? and... in the '40s there, and later on, Per When Per to give dignity to the workers, but fundamentally who impressed me the most was Evita. What memories do you have of her? uy ! many, Evita... Evita we saw her as a goddess, she was beautiful to begin with, she was a woman... but she had a character... for me, the true revolutionary was Evita, not Peron. He was a military man with ideas, with things he had taken a lot from Europeans, right? but Evita was a person who had come to where she was not because she was Per And my father went blind, because at that time there were no cataract operations, none of that, he went blind. And one day a colleague said to me 'why don and he says, 'Look, you already have the no, maybe?' we at school had those Rivadavia notebooks, I tore out two sheets and I wrote to Evita and I told her: my father is blind, he needs a pension, we lived in a "conventillo" there in the Chacabuco street, so I went where the Eva Per but they told me there to leave the note, I did not ask for any receipt... I didn't know to ask, nothing. So I went and delivered the letter. A week later, a woman comes; she was very elegant, very nice, to the room where we lived in the conventillo and says 'are you so-and-so?' 'Yes' 'did you write this letter to Evita?' and she showed me the letter 'yes' 'and your father?' 'He is in his room' 'Can I talk to him?' 'Yes, wait until I turn on the light', why would I turn on the light if he couldn I turn on the lights and she tells me 'could you leave us alone for a few minutes?' Of course, I went outside to the patio, I remember that there was a large vine tree there in the patio and I was outside for about half an hour. After a while this woman came out and says 'well, look, I already spoke with your father, I took note of all this, I am going to tell Mrs. Evita how your father is and in a week at the latest you will have news.' A guy appears a week later and says 'are you so-and-so?' because I will take him to do the pension process'. My old man was retired after 15 days, thanks to Evita. So then, you don who sends a letter to Evita and Evita answers and sends her secretary. I asked her later because I saw the secretary again and I said 'why did Mrs. Evita send you to see me?' and she says 'she was very interested in your letter and then she sent me to see you and to see your father' and I say 'well, give her my love, a kiss from me' and that was the relationship I had with Evita; Evita for me was always present in all things. Later also when she died I was on the whole route to go to see Evita. It was as if a mother, someone very dear, left. It was these things And your relationship with Peronism, how was that Adolfo? With Peronism? and in some things well and in others not. Because there was also a lot of imposition and I did not like the impositions, so I was very rebellious, I accepted things of Peronism, and there were things that I rejected. At that time there was an education minister Oscar Ivanissevich, that we had a tense relationship with, and the police would run us, but we were more agile than the police, we ran faster, so the police never grabbed us, it was incredible. But it was all this, the fight. There were things that we did not like, that they imposed on us and other things yes. The case of workers, the case of women, he took many things from the Socialists, Alfredo Palacio, the chair for example, the law of chair, that women when they worked could sit because previously they couldn They had to work 8 hours, 10 hours on their feet. Then there were a lot of rights and Per and well... but I have never been part of a political party, to this day, no. We tried to keep... to support those things that seemed important to us and in other things being critical. But well, I think that Peronism came to the people because it made things visible and gave them what they were never given. That is why to this day the new generations that did not live in Peronism still believe that this is the way, the right of the workers, the right of women, the right of children, were things that one logically agreed with. I agreed with all that of Peronism. Let Yes, I had already left the School of Fine Arts, had also done something with architecture but I'm not an architect... I've been a professor at the University of Architecture, yes. What do you remember about that time, about the discussions that took place, especially the issue of the armed struggle that was strong in Argentine politics? And how was the step to the creation of SERPAJ in the year '74? That time was a very hard time, very difficult, there were the three A's, there were disappearances, murders, tortures with the security forces In the year '75 the three A were already there, they were not invented by L L all of a repressive structure. This is what happened there. And already in the year... the only human rights organization was the Liga Argentina por los Derechos del Hombre, which is now 80 years old. We in the year '70, or before '70, rather those who preceded me in '60 began to work from Mexico on what is now the SERPAJ, which comes from a Christian base movement, ecumenical, nonviolent, that they had been working in different countries. In the year '74 at the major seminary in Medellin, in which Hildegard Mayr and Jean Goss participated, I was asked to be able to organize this continental movement and give it coherence, a structure and thus SERPAJ emerged. In the year 72-73 it begins to publish the newspaper peace and justice and that's where the name comes from. There we began to work with the base communities, with the popular organizations, in the favelas, with the peasants and indigenous movements, with young people, the trade union movement, so this is what when the movement arose, there were no human rights organizations in the country or in Latin America, and there we began to generate in the year '75 the Asamblea Permanente por los Derechos Humanos and the Movimiento Ecum which begin to work in the SERPAJ. But we as an international movement could not demand on... then the ecumenical movement was for the churches to assume their responsibility for the help of the families of the victims and the Assembly was the figure this was still not known how it was of the figure of the disappeared. and the families looking for victims were already starting to go to SERPAJ? Yes, that's why we have to generate those organizations. One thing happened, it was the end of November '75, there was Aldo Etchegoyen, the bishop of the Methodist church Carlos Gatinoni, there were several, Eduardo Pimentel, we requested a meeting with the commander in chief of the armed forces at that time Jorge Rafael Videla, that he does not receive us, his assistant at that time General Galatea receives us and he almost did not let us speak at the meeting, and this man told us 'if they threw us stones, we are going to leave and 10 minutes later, we are going to return with a mountain' he was already announcing the coup, it was a very hard meeting. He says 'the armed forces cannot allow this', but they were already announcing it, it was vox populi, Isabel Per we went to the Chamber of Deputies and I remember a deputy who was a leader of the meat business, (Alberto) Stecco, and we talk to him and he says 'no, the president said we have to be able to get a soldier in every corner' Listen, you do not have to put a solder in every corner, this does not solve the problem of violence, because the schools suffered violence, I was a professor of the university of architecture in La Plata, the courses were stopped, there was a lot... the entire guerrilla movement began, there were already disappeared, there were dead, many students who were my students are missing. And we were there trying to see a bit of what to do within the student movement to be able to face all this. And we were also in some secondary schools giving classes but very often we had to stop the courses for the bomb threats and the serious situation that was lived. And there we began to see... we tried to approach the churches with very few results, the Methodist church yes, the Lutherans too, but the catholic church, except Jaime de Nevares, Then Hessayne, then Novak, Alberto Devoto de Huellas de Corrientes with the agrarian Leagues, the movements, that had kidnapped and tortured Marta Morello, a catechist there from the Diocese of Goya. Those were very hard times, and then there were kidnappings also of (Argentino) Larrabure, a colonel, who was later assassinated, after Aramburu, the former president. There were already the Montoneros developing their actions, the Operativo Independencia begins and we already saw that this ended in a civil war, ended in the military dictatorship, which was already announced. What's going on? since our work is in Latin America we already knew that this did not start from Argentina, this had to do with the doctrine of national security that was born in the Pentagon, was born in the School of the Americas, was born in the war in Algeria, in the Spanish Civil War and all these experiences with which a model is implanted throughout Latin America, polarization east to west, right? and all this is causing kidnappings, the disappearance of people, torture. Here in Argentina it is applied in a way, in a tremendous way, the coup in Chile was cruel but they killed. Also in Brazil and Brazil's Superior War School with the coup in the year '64 it is where this repressive mechanism is structured and there arises the Operation Condor right? the international terror, how it extends its tentacles even in Europe: in France, in Spain, in Italy. Did you remember the day of the coup, how did you see what was coming? People had strong moments and weak moments of military coups and weak civil governments. We thought this would be something like that, there would be repression, which would put opposition prisoners, but never thought it would take this dimension of cruelty, death, disappearance. That was very hard. The coup in Argentina first appeared in the media, censorship, as there was not much news. I had to leave the country 5 days later, this was what saved my life. Because I talked to people in Europe and told them, 'Look, there will be a coup, I don there are many difficulties come anyways because we have everything organized we can And the coup is on the 24th and I leave the country on the 29th, I passed 8 military checkpoints to the plane, I had a terrible fright right? because they checked our passports, everything. It was lucky I was not on the list and the plane left. Did you go alone or with your family? Alone, alone, my wife went a week later but... eh... March, in April a command invades the SERPAJ and take everyone prisoner, including my son Leonardo who was 17 at that time. We were in Switzerland, in Geneva and we started a campaign for the liberation of the comrades of SERPAJ. After two days three days they are released, they do not give them back the money, nor the files, and then Hildegard Mayr speaks with the Austrian government, we from there... I travel, then I return to Geneva and they, the Austrian government at that time, the Prime Minister was Bruno Kreisky, ask the embassy, to take my children to the embassy to protect them, and my three children They are there for about 15 days inside the embassy under diplomatic protection, for the fear of... then from Geneva, United Nations, I sent two delegates with authorizations as their father to remove the boys. And the Austrian ambassador does not leave the Ezeiza airport until they close the plane door and the children leave and we receive them there in Geneva. From there we are going to live in Vienna, we had a beautiful house, to work with the indigenous communities. I need someone who knows the people but my job was not to stay there, my job was Latin America. From there we go to Brussels, in Brussels we are with Fellowship of Reconciliation the international movement of reconciliation and from there we go to Paris. In Paris I meet... eh... with Proa and I say 'look, I can I have to go back to Latin America' and he says' well, look come to Ecuador and we will see that you stay as a missionary and I can offer you this.' Immediately we made arrangement for everything, the whole passage, to Quito, Ecuador, from there a bus to Riobamba and there the house of the Santa Cruz in the mountain, would give us lodging. So I am with my wife and my three children. On August 4 we were waiting for the arrival of bishops for an international meeting, of Latin American bishops. A bishop who had to arrive who never arrived was Enrique Angelelli, who was murdered. We do not know about the news from Argentina, but through Barcelona. We were there with Proano, we came down from the mountain and go to Riobamba and indeed, Vicente Zazpe, the archbishop of Santa Fe, was waiting. 'We are going to wait for Zazpe to come', then the bishops began to arrive and on the 9th Zazpe arrives and we say 'Vicente, what happened?' and Vicente says 'look we are still in doubt if it was an accident or it was an attack' because they disguised it as a car accident, on the route, in the Chamical. On August 12 a commando invades Santa Cruz. With masks, long weapons, we were in the library then they enter, they took us all prisoners. Of course from Riobamba to Quito, where they took us prisoners, to the barracks of Quito are about 250 km. and of course the soldiers when they saw the bishops said 'they told us it was a subversive group' and they wanted to confess to the bishops on the bus. They said 'no, because we didn't know, they told us it was a subversive group, a group of terrorists' and the say 'father' they said to the bishops 'forgive us for our sins' 'quiet son, you have been forgiven for a long time now' (he laughs) and when did you decide to return to Argentina? and well after that they expel us back again to Riobamba, from there we decided to return and on April 4, 1977 they arrested me, and we went to the torture center of the Federal Security Superintendence. And there begins the whole problem of... I remembered that the editor of an English newspaper, the Buenos Aires Herald, Robert Cox, was also imprisoned, and there they also took the Graivers, the Graiver family, who were interrogated, they stayed for one night. And the Divinsky couple, from the La Flor publishing house, the publisher of Mafalda, were also imprisoned there, after which they were taken away. and in May is that you suffered a simulacrum of a death flight? that was on May 5 of the year '77 After 32 days, I was stuck in the prison, that was a torture center. They take me out, handcuff me, they take me to an office and they tell me 'you are going to be transferred', they didn't tell me where and they put me in a van and after about two hours of driving around the city, I did not even see, I did not know where, we arrive at the airfield of San Justo, there, a small plane comes out, taxiing on the runway and I was chained by the handcuffs and they tie my legs with padlocks and the plane leaves, it starts to fly by the Rio de La Plata. I knew because I had seen the microfilm in Geneva in the International association of jurists, the bodies, the corpses that came to the Uruguayan coast, young people, many were missing an arm, a leg, or eaten by fish, but they arrived in the coast and those microfilm came to the International Association of Jurists. And in a moment I see that the officer in charge of the plane, apart from the pilot, the copilot, starts to manipulate a box, a wooden box, and that's where he had the injections to inject the prisoners, leave them numb and to be able to throw them off, until the pilot says 'I have orders to take the prisoner to the air base' The air base is in Mor there the plane lands and there they have me chained, I could not get off the plane, with guards, the officer goes down, pilot, the copilot and they go to a yellow building I remember very well and there they decide what to do with me. When the officer returns he tells me 'be happy we take you to U 9'. I never thought that I was going to be happy that they were taking me to a prison, because there they would legalize me, before that I was just a disappeared. Then they take me to U 9, and there begins another story that is all the time until the World Cup. That two days before the World Cup... there we went through everything, torture, pressure, persecution of all kinds, humiliation, there you are not a person, nobody has a name, we have a number, so always they mentioned the number was not a person and... now I had, let's call it luck because of all the international support I had, even every week there were pickets in front of the Argentine embassies, international protests, that was the reason why I am a survivor. To this day, right? I'm still a survivor What did that experience in jail leave you? look, there are two things I learned in prison: first you have to resist so you do not break; and that in prison you can be a free man if you have realized that you can put the body there but not conscience. If you destroy let them destroy your conscience, then you lost. It was a capacity of struggle and resistance when they closed the gates of the pavilion I spent 40 minutes doing yoga and exercise to keep physically fit, I still do that to this day, but it was a way to resist, and then my companions and later as a Christian for me it was very strong, very important, the prayer, spiritual life, that held me. Now many came out destroyed, I have colleagues who I haven not to say we fight, it did not end here, this here we have to go on, right? there are people that come out of prisons destroyed, not knowing which is worse, if physical torture or psychological torture. I learned that, you have to try to resist in extreme situations, but for me it was a question of spirituality. There were very serious things as the bible says when Jesus is crucified, he says and I said but these bastards do know what they do, these guys know exactly what they are doing. They know. but later when I was in the same place with Adolfo Scilingo, then I realized they did not know what they were doing, because here Scilingo told me that they thought everything they did was to save the country from the clutches of international communism, that was the enemy they were showed, and he was saying what he did in a war in defense of the homeland. It is tremendous that. What was it like for you, two years after that experience, to have received the Nobel Peace Prize? Look, the Nobel Peace Prize is an instrument at the service of the people, if not, it does not work, right? Ir was useful to open doors, to signal to the world what was happening not only in Argentina but throughout Latin America and gave us perhaps a capacity of resistance, showed the world what the people were suffering. and so when I was awarded the Nobel Prize I did not want to take it in a personal capacity but on behalf of the people of Latin America. Because it is not the work of one person, is the work of thousands of people, peasants, indigenous people throughout Latin America because of that I'm working here, I'm here but we have partners in Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia, Brazil, in Chile, in Peru in Paraguay, it and many lost their lives, then I have the spiritual and moral obligation that this memory will not be lost. The memory is present, and the memory is not to stay in the past, memory enlightens us, it is this present that calls us, which calls us to question and we have a long way to go but we have made way, we made way so that we can continue working with hope. What are the struggles you feel today? today A democracy is not just putting the ballot in a box, a democracy means the right and equality for all. Today it does not exist, when it exists, that is how we can restore the balance of the relationships of the human being with the like, with our community, with our people, that's why we fight. For mother earth. It is not that we work to alleviate the pain of others, we try to accompany the pain of others but if we do not go to the causes that generate all these conflicts, we will never be able to build a better society. So I always tell my students, I still work in the university, one thing: do not stop smiling to life, the day they lose their smile to life is because they were beaten. So be rebels, keep fighting, keep thinking that hope is not a utopia, hope is a daily walk. It is this.